My Beauty Best Teacher

Continuing our focus on academia-industry linkages we take a look at the Makerere University Private Sector Forum. They describe themselves:

As a new vehicle for promoting value addition to the University products in addressing the Private Sector needs. It will serve as a central 'hub' for practical support and information dissemination, encourage and facilitate the University Departments by linking them up with the Private Sector in socio-economic development, initiate demand driven joint research and practice to influence development policy and curriculum review, technology innovations and projects at national and regional levels. Value for money based-practices to promote the Private Sector enterprise development is key in the partnership.

Ismail-Musa Ladu covering the initiative at Zibb states

The marriage between the University and the private sector will ensure that both participate in the creation and running of academic programmes like training and research and stand to benefit from technological innovations generated by the academia.
This will also ensure that the University produces graduates who will fit the needs of the jobs market by being employment-focused student training, problem-oriented and demand driven research that include policy at the national and regional level.

The Economic Commission for Africa reports "...The private sector only gets a brief mention in the Millennium Development Goals. Yet it is business – entrepreneurs, employers, investors and workers – who are best positioned to help Africa achieve the Goals...One area where private sector intervention could really make a difference is boosting the use of information and communication technologies (ICTs) as proposed in Goal 8...ICTs are crucial for developing countries. They help reduce costs, improve productivity and increase access to domestic and international markets, thus contributing to economic growth and competition in the global economy...It’s indisputable that the private sector has played a major role in the evolution of ICTs, particularly in the mushrooming mobile phone networks. Nigeria has the world’s fastest growing mobile market, increasing by about 143 percent in 2003. That’s the kind of growth that will bring the MDGs within reach...So why is Africa finding it hard to achieve the necessary growth rates? Tariff barriers and border restrictions, heavy and indiscriminate taxation, complex, time-consuming regulations and bureaucracy have all played a part.Vigorous entrepreneurship can be seen in the informal sector all over the continent but these constraints, as well as disincentives discouraging investors, prevent small operators from thriving and expanding their businesses to become energetic - small and medium-sized enterprises and the engine of African growth.Africa does not just need growth per-se, but specifically growth in labour-intensive sectors that leads to job creation and wage improvement. This link is vital because the fastest exit from poverty is through employment and higher salaries..."

Warrick Smith writes(PDF) about the potential of entrepreneurship in the developing world. "...Today, few informed commentators question that the private sector plays a critical role in growth and poverty reduction. The ideological debates of the past are giving way to more pragmatic discussions about how best to unleash and expand that contribution while preserving other social values. New research is also providing fresh insights into what works and what doesn’t...when assessing the contribution of entrepreneurship to development,we need a more encompassing view. We need to include peasant farmers toiling in their fields in Uganda and Bangladesh; street vendors peddling their wares in La Paz and Manila; and microenterprises in Cairo and Istanbul...The private sector is the principal source of investment, with domestic private investment substantially overshadowing foreign investment across the developing world...The private sector accounts for about 90 percent of jobs in developing countries, .and poor people rate self-employment and jobs as the two most promising ways to improve their situation. But employment is not the only mechanism. A vibrant private sector expands the availability and reduces the prices of goods in society, including goods consumed by poor people. And firms and commercial transactions are the main source of taxes from which governments can empower the poor through investments in health, education and other public goods, as well as through direct income transfers..."

An IDRC Study examined the success of indigenous pre-commercial inventions in Nigeria and posits solutions to improve the structural inefficiencies within this important plank of industrial realization. They include that
"...The government should not fund R&D activities until it identifies specific social, economic, technical, and other kinds of problems that need R&D solutions. The next step should be to develop research programs with specific objectives and, after dialogue with R&D institutes, to evolve means for achieving the desired results. Funds should then be tied to specific research programs. R&D institutes should be made to sink or swim on the basis of the number of feasible need-oriented research programs they can attract and what they can do with the programs. This means putting an end to blanket funding for institutes..."also"...The R&D institutes should be allowed to sell their services to the private sector and thus become more relevant to the needs of the country. The institutes should be allowed to compete for research projects initiated in the private sector. For this to be effective, the government needs to provide the private sector with an incentive to use R&D services. A climate of liberal imports does not provide this incentive. The incentive should take the form of special tax rebates or outright matching of funds for private-sector users of indigenous R&D institutes..."

The aims of the Private Sector Foundation Uganda, are "...To promote private sector influence for business growth and competitiveness through policy advocacy and capacity building in a sustainable manner...To strengthen private sector capacity for effective policy advocacy and market competitiveness..."

Poor USA- I tried to warn you. We have a politician here in Michigan who sounds a lot like Obama- an amateur who lacked executive experience, a liberal who pushed for higher taxes and more regulation, and a Democrat who passes larger and larger budgets that benefit special interest groups while the state suffers. Granholm, our Governor, even has a bogeyman to blame like Obama- first it was Engler, than it was Bush, and if she was Governor another 10-20 years, it would always be a bogeyman causing the problems, not her. Get used to it, nation, because when I listen to Obama talk, that's the impression I get.

Okay, so I'm looking through Obama's speech, and here are some parts that jump out to me:

"That day of reckoning has arrived, and the time to take charge of our future is here."

First off, why is today the day of reckoning? Why wasn't it yesterday, or last year, or two years ago? Why wasn't it September 11, 2001, or 1940, or 1776? Why is it the election of Obama as President? Obama shows his lack of humility, and shows why people mock him by calling him the Messiah and the Anointed one- he feels that the election of him is the day of reckoning. That's interesting.

According to wikipedia, the Day of reckoning is a term used to describe the Last Judgment in Christian eschatology. Judgment Day, or Day of the Lords, is the judgment by God of all nations. It will take place after the resurrection of the dead and the Second Coming (Revelation 20:12–15). So what does Obama really believe about our times? Interestingly enough, wikipedia is a fine help- under the section "Gnostic tradition", there is this line-

some liberal theologies reject the traditional conception of the Last Judgment as inconsistent with an all-just and loving God, in favor of some form of universal salvation. They teach that all beings of the human evolution will ultimately be saved in a distant future as they acquire a superior grade of consciousness and altruism.

Obama thinks that he is more evolved than us, that he is superior in consciousness and altruism than us, and that he is the second coming of Jesus, and that the election of him will bring universal salvation to all- everyone, no matter if they are good or bad, will be saved by him, and he will provide everything to everyone.

Here is another line I like:

This plan will save or create 3.5 million jobs. More than 90% of these jobs will be in the private sector - jobs rebuilding our roads and bridges; constructing wind turbines and solar panels; laying broadband and expanding mass transit.

Let's see if I understand the logic- 1 trillion dollars in taxpayer money, government money, sent to government agencies and bureaucracies, and 90% of the jobs are private sector? Building roads and bridges, wind turbines, solar panels, broadband, mass transit- I guess by private sector he means private sector in the sense that favored businesses will get government money, much like the Nazi's ran their economy under their fascist systems in Germany and Italy.

Next, let's look at how Mr. Bipartisanship really works:

Given these realities, everyone in this chamber - Democrats and Republicans - will have to sacrifice some worthy priorities for which there are no dollars. And that includes me. But that does not mean we can afford to ignore our long-term challenges. I reject the view that says our problems will simply take care of themselves; that says government has no role in laying the foundation for our common prosperity.

In other words, everyone in Congress- except Democrats- will have to sacrifice their priorities- but Democrats totally reject the worldview of libertarians and fiscal conservatives. Totally reject- entirely reject- everything that you believe in, if you are a fiscal conservative or libertarian. If you voted for this guy, you elected someone who rejects your views in the name of 'bipartisanship'.

Oh, his speech is getting better- now that he is past the flowery language, we get to the heart of the matter. He is going to cut our energy supplies, especially oil. He is going to drive our domestic auto industry out of business. He is going to put in place a Soviet health care system. He is going to give everyone free college education, especially if you volunteer for Democrat causes. He is going to lose militarily around the world and sit down and give in to all of our enemies.

Incidentally, I'm shocked by how scripted this guy is- not a single variation in anything he says. I was reading this entire speech as he was saying it- he didn't vary a single word in the entire speech. Is this really how Lincoln and Reagan did it? Is this really how FDR and JFK did it? Read a speech word for word that others had written? I don't think so.

UPDATE: I was curious about what Obama knew about Greensburg, Kansas- apparently when a tornado ripped through this city last May, Obama said that 10,000 people were killed because the entire Kansas national guard was in Iraq- in reality, only 12 people died, and very little of Kansas's national guard was gone. Opps! All this guy knows are the places he saw during his campaign- all of his education about the world has been gained in campaigning for office.

How about Dillon, South Carolina, and Obama's visit there? Well, Obama was there for a campaign stop too. Apparently it is part of the 'Corridor of Shame'? Anyways, since everyone in this school is poor and African-American, and the people in this area supported Obama, he wants to now give kick-backs to this school. Interesting. See this information here.

On the north end of Democrat Gary Peters 9th District, the story of two different Americas is clearly visible for everyone to see. One America is the America of capitalism and private-sector jobs, and the other America is of corporatization and public-sector jobs. One America is the bankrupt ruins of a $2 billion shopping and housing development, and the other America is the road construction workers dutifully ripping up and rebuilding a major road right in front of it.

Democrats like Peters believe that the best way to lead our nation back to growth and prosperity is to have the national government lead the way by having the national government borrow money from banks in the US and from lenders like China abroad and then use that money to build roads, bridges, schools, and public buildings. In this America, there is job growth and pay raises, assuming that you have the correct political connections to get the jobs and you belong to the labor unions that do business with the state. In this America, there is little accountability to customers and little money to be made by taking risks, increasing efficiency, or cutting costs- in the Democrats America, there is always a job for everyone willing to do the bidding of the state.

This America is the road construction that you see in the pictures and videos, and is something that Democrats like Gary Peters can rightly take credit for.

But there is another America out there, an America where jobs are increasingly scarce, investment funds are nonexistent, and pay cuts are the norm. In this America, increasing taxes, increasing regulation, and increasing uncertainty caused by a growing state presence in the marketplace has caused it to be less profitable to do business, has scared customers and investors, and has led to high unemployment and low job growth. The government is borrowing funds for their projects, and so businesses find it increasingly difficult to borrow money for their projects. Efforts to cut costs and increase efficiency are met by political leaders publicly speaking ill about your company, and it becomes increasingly difficult to meet the bottom line when the government forces the bottom line up and talks profits down.

This America is the abandoned and bankrupt building project that you can see in the pictures and videos, and this is also something that Democrats and Gary Peters can take credit for.

The two Americas meet at the 93-acre site on Telegraph Road near Square Lake Road in Bloomfield Hills. Bloomfield Park was once the symbol of booming private America- a place where citizens could work, buy products, and live. It now lies abandoned, naked steel girders and half-built looming structures, some seven stories tall, crumbling and rusting in front of construction work to rebuild the public road that goes past it. Its marble foundations and ambitious scale are the risks that America once took on itself, but at its feet now scurry the workers of the America that now safely puts its power in the hands of government officials.

But work continues on Telegraph road. Signs boldly advertise that the project was paid for by stimulus dollars voted for and signed into law by Democrats. Democrats like Peters point to this as a sign that his plan is working, and wants to be returned to office based on public works projects like these. That's the America that Democrats ultimately want- an America that is dependent on the state for jobs and income and growth while the private sector dies.

All video and picture was taken by me from my camera phone, after I snuck past security and risked my life walking through the dangerous ruins of America's once glorious past (pre-2008).

UPDATE: Thanks for linking!

Fekru Debebe asserts(PDF) that :

Privatization essentially increases the role of the private sector in the national economy and induces changes in basic values and attitudes in a society. The common characteristic features of countries which rely primarily on the private sector and free markets are freedom, basic human rights and democracy. These values are important to the development of the private sector and the acceptance of privatization would initiate a fundamental shift toward democratic values...The privatization process can also be a significant positive influence in the development of African entrepreneurial talent. In the statist development strategy of the past, indigenous entrepreneurial talent had neither been solicited nor its role recognized and encouraged. As the result, local entrepreneurs moved to where domestic opportunities were open to them, the informal sector...The new spirit toward privatization and market oriented policies is likely to bring entrepreneurs into the formal sector where they can learn and be trained in the tools of modern finance, commerce, and management. As they become more skilled and educated in an environment of freedom and private enterprise they are bound to make significant contribution to economic progress of their nations.

In a paper about Somalia, Tatiana Nenova writes that "...the private sector has demonstrated its much-vaunted capability to make do. To cope with the absence of the rule of law, private enterprises have been using foreign jurisdictions or institutions to help with some tasks, operating within networks of trust to strengthen property rights, and simplifying transactions until they require neither. Somalia’s private sector experience suggests that it may be easier than is commonly thought for basic systems of finance and some infrastructure services to function where government is extremely weak or absent..." A discussion analysing this assertion had a number of conclusions in their introductory remarks Ian Bannon and Tim Harford stated that "...Entrepreneurs in Somalia have used three tactics to operate in an institutional vacuum. First, they have “imported institutions,” for example by using banking systems in nearby countries. Second, they have used clans and other local networks of trust to help with contract enforcement, payment and transmission of funds. Third, they have simplified transactions to a point where other tactics are not needed. How can these tactics be reinforced or defended? Are there others that can be supported? There are inherent limits to what the private sector can achieve without the support of a capable state to enforce property rights and provide basic public goods. But there is also a risk that a failed state will be replaced by a predatory one. How can fledgling states be encouraged to support, rather than predate on, entrepreneurs?
Entrepreneurs often need to bridge religious, ethnic or tribal boundaries to get things done. Can entrepreneurship be harnessed for peace and reconciliation?..."
Via PSD Blog

The private sector is just as rotten, Salisu Suleiman writes:

The kind of theft that has taken place in our banks in the four short years of post consolidation has left civil servants and other public sector workers looking like angels. The entire banking sector workforce is less than 100,000. A few crooks among them have, at the risk of generalization nearly crippled the entire Nigerian economy. Add to them the plethora of crooked stock broking firms, insurance companies and other private sector operators you wonder the sorts of underhand deals that go on virtually unreported.
A civil servant that steals is a corrupt official. A businessman that steals 10 times as much is a whiz kid.

More here

Moeletsi Mbeki writes about the need to unfetter the private sector, it "... consists of the rural poor and of subsidiaries of foreign-owned companies. Neither of which is free to operate in the marketplace because each is dominated politically by non-producers who control the state. This is the weakness of the African private sector that explains its inability to become an engine of economic development. Africa’s private sector lacks political power and is therefore not free to operate to maximize its objectives. Above all, it is not free to decide what happens to its savings...The elite diverts these savings towards its own consumption, and also to strengthen the state’s repressive instruments. Much of what Africa’s elite consumes is imported. So state consumption does not create a significant market for African producers. Instead, it is a major drain on national savings that would otherwise have gone into productive investment. This explains Africa’s growing impoverishment. The more the political elite consolidates its power, the stronger its hold over the state, and therefore the more rural societies sink into poverty and African economies regress... ",Global Agenda.

Tina Korbe at HotAir explains the picture perfectly:

A new report out yesterday from The Heritage Foundation shows private sector job creation dropped dramatically almost immediately after President Barack Obama signed the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (a.k.a. Obamacare) into law.

From the recession’s low point in January 2009 until April 2010, when Obamacare went into effect, the private sector created about 67,600 jobs a month. After the president signed PPACA into law, that number slowed to a meager 6,400 jobs a month — a more than 90 percent decrease or less than one-tenth the previous rate.

As the report states, correlation cannot prove causation — but the change in course is statistically measurable and testing reveals a structural break between April and May of 2010. Moreover, small-business owners have said Obamacare is a deterrent to hiring. Take Scott Womack, the owner of 12 IHOP restaurants in Indiana and Ohio, as just one example. Before Obamacare became law, he had development plans in Ohio. Now, he’s worried he won’t be able to carry out his original plans unless Obamacare is repealed. Those restaurants he planned to open would provide jobs not only for his future employees, but also for everyone involved in the construction of the restaurant buildings themselves.

As the Heritage report explains, Obamacare discourages hiring in three important ways:
Businesses with fewer than 50 workers have a strong incentive to maintain this size, which allows them to avoid the mandate to provide government-approved health coverage or face a penalty; Businesses with more than 50 workers will see their costs for health coverage rise—they must purchase more expensive government-approved insurance or pay a penalty; and Employers face considerable uncertainty about what constitutes qualifying health coverage and what it will cost. They also do not know what the health care market or their health care costs will look like in four years. This makes planning for the future difficult.

Democrats once touted that Obamacare would create jobs, but the data underscore the reality that that’s not true for the private sector. The only jobs Obamacare created were within the new agencies and layers of bureaucracy the law added to the federal government.

The Heritage report recommends repeal — and comes as a welcome reminder that the health care law can’t be ignored as the president and Congress attempt to address the debt and deficit or as the nation attempts to right the still-struggling economy. Nor can it be ignored in the upcoming presidential election. Likely U.S. voters have said jobs and the economy are their No. 1 issue. That means the repeal of Obamacare should be a top priority, too.

Last year, our nation had a choice for President. On one hand we had a man who sprouted very nice sounding platitudes but lacked experience and had a very extreme voting record. On the other hand we had a man who spoke truthfully about the situation and had a lot of experience and had solid and well thought out policy positions. Sadly, those two were not on the same ballot- the experienced solid conservative lost in the primaries to John McCain. If only we could have had a chance to elect Mitt Romney last election, things might have turned out differently.

That's not to say that there would have been no recession, healthcare would not have been a concern, and Iran would have continued to enrich uranium. If Mitt Romney would have become President instead of Barack Obama, those things would still have happened. But the key question is how would Romney have handled those situations differently than Obama and how those differences might affect our nation.

Some people think there is no difference between the two major parties or think that Romney wasn't really that different than someone like Obama. They are wrong. In many important and key situations Romney would have advocated considerably different policies than Obama, policies that may have led to a shorter and less severe recession, that would have lowered the cost of healthcare, and that would have led to Iran thinking twice about seeking the bomb.

This is not idle thoughts- Mitt Romney wrote an editorial this week in USA Today where he laid out some things he would have done as President differently than Barack Obama. This is why he was and remains my choice for President:

• Repair the stimulus. Freeze the funds that haven't yet been spent and redirect them to immediate, private sector job-creation priorities.
• Create tax incentives that promote business expansion and hiring. For example, install a robust investment tax credit, permit businesses to expense capital purchases made in 2010, and reduce payroll taxes. These will reignite construction, technology and a wide array of capital goods industries, and lead to expanded employment.
• Prove to the global investors that finance America's debt that we are serious about reining in spending and becoming fiscally prudent by adopting limits on non-military discretionary spending and reforming our unsustainable, unfunded entitlements. These are key to strengthening the dollar, reducing the threat of rampant inflation and holding down interest rates.
• Close down any talk of carbon cap-and-trade. It will burden consumers and employers with billions in new costs. Instead, greatly expand our commitment to natural gas and nuclear, boosting jobs now and reducing the export of energy jobs and dollars later.
• Tell the unions that job-stifling "card check" legislation is off the table. Laying new burdens on small business will kill entrepreneurship and job creation.
• Don't allow a massive tax increase to go into effect in 2011 with the expiration of the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts. The specter of more tax-fueled government spending and the reduction of capital available for small business will hinder investment and business expansion.
• New spending should be strictly limited to items that are critically needed and that we would have acquired in the future, such as new military equipment to support our troops abroad and essential infrastructure at home.
• Install dynamic regulations for the financial sector — rules that are up to date, efficient and not excessively burdensome. But do not so tie up the financial sector with red tape that we lose a vital component of our economic system.
• Open the doors to trade. Give important friends like Colombia favored trade status rather than bow to protectionist demands. Now is the time for aggressive pursuit of opportunities for new markets for American goods, not insular retrenchment.
• Stop frightening the private sector by continuing to hold GM stock, by imposing tighter and tighter controls on compensation, and by pursuing a public insurance plan to compete with private insurers. Government encroachment on free enterprise is depressing investment and job creation.

These are great points and both Republicans and Democrats should get behind Romney and support his bid for President in 2012.

Philip Stevens writes in the Taipei Times

According to International Finance Corporation and World Bank figures, between a third and half of the US$16.7 billion spent on health in sub-Saharan Africa in 2005 was spent in the private sector, often by the poorest people who cannot get government services. This huge capacity is ignored by donors, who for ideological reasons prefer to work directly with governments.
Donors should be embracing this massive capacity, offering competitive contracts to deliver health services. Non-profit groups, government and, crucially, the private sector should all be competing to deliver a broad set of services, such as improving maternal health. This competitive stimulus would give a powerful incentive to improve standards...[continue reading]

Read parent paper titled Foreign Aid for Health - Moving beyond government (pdf)

The Economist writes:

Ethiopia likes to do things differently. In September it started celebrating the new millennium, more than seven years after everybody else. The country has been out of step in this respect since 1582: while the rest of the Christian world changed to the revised Gregorian calendar, Ethiopia stuck to the Julian. It also still keeps its own time, measured in 12-hour cycles rather than 24-hour ones.

Referring to its comatose private sector:

The reasons for this economic crawl are not hard to find. Beyond the government-directed state, funded substantially by foreign aid, there is—almost uniquely in Africa—virtually no private-sector business at all. The IMF estimates that in 2005-06 the share of private investment in the country was just 11%, nearly unchanged since Mr Zenawi took over in the early 1990s. That is partly a reflection of the fact that, despite some privatisation since the centralised Marxist days of the Derg, large areas of the economy remain government monopolies, closed off to private business.

And its debilitating state-run syndrome

This is where Ethiopia misses out badly. Take telecoms. While the rest of Africa has been virtually transformed in just a few years by a revolution in mobile telephony, Ethiopia stumbles along with its inept and useless government-run services. Everywhere else, a plethora of South African, home-grown and European providers has leapt into the market to provide Africans with an extraordinary array of cheaper and more efficient services, now used even by the poorest of farmers, for instance, to check spot prices for agricultural goods in markets miles away. And the mobile-phone revolution has created thousands of new livelihoods; at times it seems as if every boy on a street corner is hawking a top-up card. Not in Ethiopia.
It is the same story in financial services, where, despite the growth of some smaller private banks, no foreign banks are allowed. Micro-finance schemes have expanded exponentially, but it remains almost impossible to find start-up loans for small or medium businesses.

This post is going to attempt to tie together commentary of FDR, Green Jobs, the Michigan 21st Century Investment Fund, and Jeff Daniels... I hope it makes sense.

As a teacher, I always become annoyed when students repeat the myth that FDR saved us from the Great Depression. It is now such a widely accepted myth that when I voice my doubts, the students think that I must be joking. It is like claiming the world is flat they think- after all, look at all the jobs that FDR created to fight the Great Depression. Look at all the never-done-before government actions, and the massive expansions in federal power that he shoved through during an unprecedented 4 terms in office. Surely he saved us, because after all, massive government action must be good, right?

Wrong. It is a myth that FDR saved us from the Great Depression. Excellent information this can be found in the essay Great Myths of the Great Depression. In fact, FDR's New Deal program was an economic failure that likely stretched a usual downturn in the economy (albeit a bad sharp one) into a depression that the US did not truly emerge from until after FDR was dead. Roosevelt’s formula of substituting government programs for a normal business recovery did not create the high unemployment. FDR's idea of extracting tax dollars from individuals and corporations to fund government programs such as the Works Progress Administration (WPA) was a bad idea. The WPA hired workers to pick up trash, cut down trees, and build roads, bridges, and schools- but even though the government was 'creating jobs,' in reality they merely transferred jobs from the productive private sector to the inefficient public one. For more yet, see this site.

This myth does not die though. In Michigan, our government has dramatically increased the amount of money that it spends on two 'job creation programs' that are the centerpiece of Granholm's economic recovery program for Michigan. In fact, during her campaign, these two 'job creation programs' featured prominently, and obviously people bought this myth, because she won re-election over a real job creator in Michigan, Republican Dick DeVos. As michiganliberal.com put it "Granholm announced the creation of funding for new companies that will help diversify our economy and keep people and ideas in this state," buying into the myth that the government can tax productive companies and then somehow create jobs with that money.

In reality though, government can not create jobs, it can only force people from productive private sector jobs to inefficient public sector jobs. An article in the Detroit Free Press described how tax dollars in Michigan (where taxes have been steadily been raised) were used by two state programs, the Venture Michigan Fund and the Michigan 21st Century Investment Fund, to try to help bring new jobs to Michigan. These programs were created because Democrat Governor Jennifer Granholm and liberal state lawmakers believed that they could create jobs using the power of the government. The result?

According to the research, Michigan's government spent 116 million dollars and to create 40 new Michigan jobs over the last two years - at the cost of almost $3 million per 'created' job! What's even worse, liberals and government has reached the wrong conclusion- they think that this is a success (the headline of the Free Press article- 'State Venture Capital Funds Start Paying Off'). Thank you to the Michigan Taxpayers Association for staying on top of this one.

So what sent me off on this long rant and prompted me to spend 30 minutes coming up with this post? Those annoying commercials I have to listen to that are narrated by Jeff Daniels! The Michigan Economic Development Corporation has a whole library of video's that they run on TV and the radio that they have put together to tout the myth of government creating jobs. The most annoying of these are the ones that claim that the MEDC is doing great things when it uses massive amounts of taxpayer money to lure environmental companies here, and by doing so somehow creates jobs. Michigan is now fully behind the myth of government job creation- even worse, it is buying in more and more into the more specific myth of green jobs.

John Stossel destroys this myth in his recent article "The Fallacy of Green Jobs." I'm going to pull from it and edit it below:

Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama has a great twofer pitch: "green jobs." It sounds like a winner. Politicians always promise that their programs will create jobs. The fallacy is the same in every case: Even if the program creates jobs building bridges or windmills, it necessarily prevents other jobs from being created. This is because government spending merely diverts money from private projects to government projects.

Governments create no wealth. They only move it around while taking a cut for their trouble. So any jobs created over here come at the expense of jobs that would have been created over there. Pharaohs created thousands of jobs by building pyramids. Our government could create jobs by paying people to dig holes and then fill them up. Would actual wealth be created? Of course not. It would be destroyed. It's like arguing the hurricanes create jobs. After all, the destruction is followed by rebuilding. But does anyone seriously believe that replacing destroyed buildings creates wealth?

Look at Obama's plan- it wholeheartedly buys the myth. If "green jobs" make so much sense, the market will create them. They will be created by private entrepreneurs and venture capitalists who are eager to profit from winning investments. The best ideas will rise to the top, and green energy will gradually replace coal and oil. If politicians were serious about creating jobs and cleaner technologies, they would step aside and let the free market go to work.

The last thing I want to leave you with is the Broken Window Fallacy, as spelled out by French economist Frederic Bastiat. He pointed out that a broken shop window will create work for a glassmaker, but that work comes only at the expense of the cook or tailor the shopkeeper would have patronized if he didn't have to replace the window. Government taxing tax money, cycling it through inefficient bureaucracies and vast overhead, and then trying to build things inefficiently that the market is not does not create jobs- it destroys jobs.

Need proof- during the Great Depression, FDR's unemployment rate hovered around 15%. And in Michigan, under liberal Democrat Granholm's administration and her government-jobs creation program, Michigan has lurched into a one-state recession and had it's unemployment rate climb from 3.7 to 7.2%.

An FT report on African infrastructure finance states:

Passions run high over all forms of privatisation and private-sector involvement in public utilities. But many experts and officials at international institutions say there is no option between public and private sectors. Infrastructure needs, they argue, will never be met without the resources of both...It has become clear that areas such as transport will continue to depend heavily on injections of public investment and donor support, but public money will have to used in different ways to combine with commercial interests. Mobilisation of capital, including private-sector capital, is one of the “pillars” of the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (Nepad), the economic revival initiative launched five years ago...Africa can also bring to bear its own private savings. South Africa’s Public Investment Corporation, which manages pension funds, is backing a Pan-African Infrastructure Development Fund, aiming initially to raise $1bn for long-term equity investments with participation from other pension funds and the AfDB.

Thanks Pablo!!

The FT reports:

The International Finance Corporation, the private-sector arm of the World Bank, is to co-ordinate a $1bn package of debt and equity funding designed to strengthen health across Africa by supporting the private sector.
The move follows the findings of a study commissioned from McKinsey highlighting the size and fast growth of private healthcare in sub-Saharan Africa and the potential it has to improve tackle ill-health among the poor while generating profits.

Looking forward to Nigeria's elections Charles Soludo contends that:

....we need answers to is how the candidates hope to reconstruct our public finance and put it back on the path of sustainability. How can they rein-in the obtuse and rapacious federal bureaucracy in particular, and the state bureaucracies, balance our budget during this period of oil boom, and yet spend at least 40% of the budget on capital expenditure as required by the Fiscal Responsibility Act? Personally, I am not convinced that we need more than 10 ministries and 10 ministers at the Federal level. They should explain to us their contingency plans in case oil price crashes tomorrow. Candidates should also let us know their views on, and framework for, borrowing (when to borrow, for what, and how it will be paid back?). Without clarity on these issues, much of the talk about government providing power/electricity and infrastructure on a sustainable basis will remain a joke as funding will always remain a binding constraint. In other words, candidates should tell us their plans to shrink the domain of the public sector to free resources to enlarge the domain of the private sector— to truly have a private sector-led, market economy. For example, I have always believed that company profit tax rate should not be more than 10% (down from the current 30% plus education tax of another 2%) especially at a period of oil price boom, and where the businesses provide their own infrastructure. For businesses to expand and create jobs, the tax rate needs to go down significantly. We need to debate this.

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Emmanuel Ashong-Katai of Ghana's SEC writes:

...the unlisted securities market holds much promise for the private sector and the growth of the national economy. Its effective and efficient development will unleash the creative potential of the Ghanaian private sector by turning ideas and inventions into marketable products both locally and internationally. It will also induce efficiencies in the entire financial system - It will force commercial banks to improve their services and reduce their lending rates to the SME sector as the unlisted market provides them with an alternative and reliable source of long- term capital.

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Read related article 'New securities market to rescue SMEs'
via PEF Ghana